


Through the fogs of time (find your way home always)

by chaWOOPa



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Background Taako/Kravitz, Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Minor Character Death, Other, johnchurch is there if u squint really hard, mostly canon compliant at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 21:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaWOOPa/pseuds/chaWOOPa
Summary: When Merle wakes up, he is on a beach. He is lying face up in the burning sand and the sun stares down at him from the clear blue sky and there is something just slightly off about that but he shrugs his shoulders and folds his hands over his belly and rolls with it anyway. He can hear the surf a short length from his feet and the seagulls screech somewhere to his left and as he closes his eyes and feels the sun warming his skin he can almost believe it is his beach from his hometown.





	Through the fogs of time (find your way home always)

When Merle wakes up, he is on a beach. He is lying face up in the burning sand and the sun stares down at him from the clear blue sky and there is something just slightly  _ off  _ about that but he shrugs his shoulders and folds his hands over his belly and rolls with it anyway. He can hear the surf a short length from his feet and the seagulls screech somewhere to his left and as he closes his eyes and feels the sun warming his skin he can almost believe it is his beach from his hometown. 

 

But that is wrong, This isn’t  _ his  _ beach. His face crinkles in concern and concentration as he gets the vague impression that something terrible happened to his home, but it passes just as fast as it came and his wrinkled face smooths out into a peaceful half-smile again as he drowns in the sounds of the sea; the sounds of home.

 

He thinks that maybe he drifts off to sleep again before someone comes to fetch him from his spot on the sand, because when he sits up the sun is setting over the horizon and it tugs at a part of his heart coated in sticky static that he cannot dig his hands into. There is the flash of a million chess games, of a red mustache and bright green eyes, of his name off the lips of someone too important for Merle to forget, but he has already forgotten by the time he looks away from the red-orange glow of the setting sun. 

 

Merle Highchurch meets the steel grey eyes of Hecuba Roughridge and she can see all his missing parts laid bare. In that moment she falls in love with a man she knows will never be able to love her back. Merle is a million miles away already, contemplating another time and place, lost on the flickering paths of fuzzy memories that someone has taken from him while Hecuba stays planted firmly in the here and now. 

 

She knows he will never be hers, and so she contents herself with being his.

 

Merle never quite exists on Hecuba’s beach. He lives there, sure, every day for seven years Merle lives with the Roughridge-Rockseeker clan on the beaches of Faerun. He wanders the town that so much reminds him of home and he calls the baker Thorin even though his name is Charles. He never learns the names of the streets or the placements of the stores, but he could trace the paths like he had lived there since infancy. 

 

He never quite figures out how to be present in his own body, and it gets him in trouble more often than he bothers to deal with. He is a stranger in this town, no matter what relations he has or doesn’t have, and so they don’t hesitate to threaten to throw him out when he wanders a little too far a few too many times. 

 

It is Hecuba who comes to his rescue that time, just like every time he got in trouble before that. She offers to throw herself to the wolves to keep him in a home and he refuses. He knows she has a daughter (though he cannot remember her name no matter how hard he tries) and he refuses to let them go without a home to live in. The marriage is Merle’s idea, in the end, when Hecuba won’t let Merle just lie down and take the punishment he has been given. 

 

He supposes he must love her to some extent, or the thought would not have crossed his mind. He supposes a lot of things about himself now a days. 

 

There is a lot of guesswork that goes into being Merle Highchurch. 

 

They get married on the same beach where she found him. He can’t tear his eyes from the water the whole time and he cannot shake the feeling that the empty waves are missing something when they crest just far enough out from shore for someone to ride them in. 

 

The wedding is small, picturesque. Merle still doesn’t know his step-daughter’s name, but it isn't for lack of trying. He knows her name starts with an ‘M’ and ends with an ‘s’ but there is another name sitting on his tongue every time he tries to say it. 

 

When Hecuba mentions that she always wanted two kids, Merle suggests they have one together. It takes them both several seconds to process what he said and when they finally do they both laugh harder than they have in years. Hecuba laughs because she knows that the man he draws (always the same man, a handsome gnome with wild hair that sticks up in every direction and a handlebar moustache better groomed than all of Merle's being put together) is the only one he could possibly belong to no matter what he says and does when he looks at those drawings. Merle laughs because to some part of him the idea of another kid is absurd. On some level, he can feel that he has five kids running around out there somewhere, and on this one he knows that he is a bad father to Mavis (he knows her name now, nearly a year after marrying her mother, he has finally learned her name) so he can only imagine what he will be to that second kid. 

 

When their baby boy is born the name  _ Magnus  _ rolls off his tongue instead of  _ Mavis _ and the only one who doesn’t notice is Merle himself. This is the happiest he has been since he woke up on the beach and when he holds his son in his arms there are five names flashing through his mind and none of them are the one he and Hecuba agreed on for the infant. 

 

Hecuba is the one who names Mookie. 

 

In the year that follows the only time that Merle spends present is the time he is playing with his kids. He wanders more, mixes names, speaks static syllables no one can understand, when he goes to bed at night Hecuba’s eyes are sometimes shot through with a vibrant green between one blink and the next. He is losing himself between two lives, not sure which is real and which isn’t, even when he can hold this one in his hands and the other only exists as letters that turn to ash and trickle out of his awareness like the sand in an hourglass as soon as he tries to string them into words. 

 

He isn’t aware of the fighting when it happens, but he sees the scars it leaves behind Hecuba’s eyes and in the way Mavis looks at them at the dinner table. He sees the scars of it in the way the pictures of their wedding are replaced by pictures of the kids. 

 

He sees the scars and sometimes he wishes he could remember the wounds that let them.

 

He is trying to be a good father and husband, his faith doesn’t demand it, but his integrity does, so he is trying his best. There is something restless in his bones, a hole in his chest the size of a lifetime, that is telling him he has other places to be, but he is trying to stay for his children anyway. He does not know how transparent he is until Hecuba calls him back to the present with a hand on either of his shoulders and her hard, silver eyes staring directly into his. 

 

“You feel trapped here, Merle,” she says, and something in his chest loosens to know that this battlefield they stand in, they two soldiers of an all out, no-holds-barred war where they have flung words like weapons and left marks behind eyes and on hearts for far, far too long, this bedroom battlefield will see peace once more. “You want to leave, so leave.”

 

She is quiet when she speaks, so that the kids don’t wake to their parent’s marital issues. She is always quiet. This time, she is packing a pouch of gold coins and telling him where is safe for him to travel. This time, he does not climb numbly into bed next to her while wondering what he said during this night’s episode of  _ Battle Royale: Marriage Style _ . 

 

This time, he puts on his gear, grabs his bible, and kisses her on the cheek one last time. 

 

“When you find what you are looking for...” Hecuba says, making Merle pause at the top of the steps to turn back and look at her. She is leaning against the doorway to their house ( _ Her home,  _ Merle thinks,  _ but never mine _ ). The light of the moon hits her face just right to illuminate her sad smile as she watches him go, and in that moment Merle knows with a frightening clarity he hasn’t felt in years, that he could have loved her once. She is beautiful, after all, and powerful and passionate and kind and everything Merle admires in a person. Most important of all, she is strong. “Whatever it may be… come back for us, alright?”

 

If Merle had been even half the person she is, he would have stayed. “I will.” He promises, then he turns and disappears into the night. 

 

Hecuba does not cry when she finally goes back into the house. 

 

Merle does cry when he finally makes camp that night with a practiced ease he cannot explain if he wanted to.

 

* * *

 

The years he wanders does wonders to clear his head. The static doesn't matter as much when he doesn't have to worry about who or where he is. 

 

He calls every baker Thorin and he doesn't have to remember anyone’s names because no one really bothers to remember his. It is refreshing to wake up in a sleeping bag with dirt in his mouth and nature within his grasp. He is falling back into a pattern of living that feels easy as breathing, even if it feels more lonely than he thinks it should, even if he leaves spots by the campfire for several more bodies.

 

He bounces from place to place, staying in forests and open fields as often as he sleeps in strange beds. He doesn’t care where his feet take him, he has faith that someone is there to guide him where he needs to go. He doesn’t get a glimpse of his end goal until halfway through the year when he takes lodging with a farmer and their wife. They have two kids that Merle kept occupied by teaching how to tend the small garden in front of the cottage in return for a hot meal and a night in a bed. 

 

The adults are talking around the dinner table late at night about nothing, about lots of things, about the fall of a town called Ravens Roost where so many people lost family and home and business, about the rainfall this season and how it will effect the harvest, about the disaster in Glamour Springs that left 40 dead and a good Chef with a bloodstain the size of a town on his record, about the proper care for the mint and basil that is growing right outside the front door. They talk about the plants that are willing to grow wild that year and how pan has blessed them for their faith in the world and in him.

 

Merle’s mind gets stuck stuck stuck on the tacky name of chef that he only barely hears through the buzz of static that clings to his ears, something tick-tick-ticks in his brain and his heart when he thinks about him and the way he ran from the sight of a disaster that most people know wasn’t even his fault. Merle wonders if he knows that it wasn’t his fault. 

 

He is stuck on the hero of the Roost who loved and lost a father and a wife in the fire and destruction brought upon by the vengeful governor. He cannot help but raise a glass to the poor bastard that thought he could outrun… Merle isn’t sure what he knows about the Hero that the Hero doesn’t know, but there is something hovering over him and he knows that their time was limited anyway.

 

The layer of him that lives in static even so many years after he woke up on an unfamiliar beach knows that those boys are his, that he has to find them and protect them from the world. The Merle sitting at the table of a farmhouse with ale in hand and breadcrumbs in his beard where flowers grow no matter what time of year it is sips his drink, calls them tragedies, and lets his mind wander back to the greenery he had planted that day. 

 

Merle sets off in the morning with well wishes at his heels and gossip on his tongue, ready to find a new region of the world he lives in. He wonders idly what set him on the path he is walking, but he doesn't change course as he goes. His heart has a mission to complete that his brain isn’t aware of while his consciousness floats in his body.

 

* * *

 

It takes another half a year for Merle to find his boys, and in that time he learns the herbs of this plane by heart, learns to heal wounds by the grace of a god he has only ever studied in the bark on trees and the blades of grass, he learns to heal without that god too. He learns that in the end it will always be up to him to get things done with his own two hands. Faith is one thing, but blind faith is another. He does not lean on blind faith, not alone. 

 

His feet lead him to Neverwinter, eventually, to a pub he thinks he recognizes but he has only fuzzy recollection of from the last time he was in the city. He calls the bartender  _ Bart  _ and even he knows that there is something wrong with that name but he calls him that anyway and then he sits down at a table with a big, brawny young human who looks ten years too old and a thousand years too sad, but is still  _ unmistakably Magnus _ and offers him an ale. “This seat taken?” He watches his mouth ask, as though he is talking to a stranger, and for all purposes he is, and when Magnus shakes his head no and takes the Ale, Merle grins. 

 

“‘M Merle,” he says, not at all quietly. There are no children to wake up here, only ghosts (And everyone knows ghosts slumber far too deep for a few stray words to make them stir).

 

“Magnus,” Magnus answers, after a swig of his own drink, and then he sticks out his hand to shake. Merle doesn’t (can’t) keep track of the conversation after that, but he is at peace with this for the first time in a long time. Instead, he is waiting for something, though for what he cannot fathom until he becomes aware of an elf picking their way carefully into the bar. 

 

He doesn’t know how, but he knows that elf. 

 

He knows the hands that are trembling slightly from how they try to stay still, the stutter as he orders a drink and kicks himself out of loops before they can begin, the spot he leaves to his left for someone who  _ should be there where did she go, where is Lup, where is his- _ Magnus stands abruptly and Merle startles out of the static trap his mind had floated into. 

 

It’s funny, when Merle thinks about this moment years in the future, he remembers Magnus’s movement pulling him from the static when nothing else before ever could. 

 

He makes his way towards the job board and Merle waddles after him slowly, one eye on either of his boys even if they aren’t his boys just yet. There is a scuffle over the job Magnus wants, and Merle is the only one unsurprised when the elf joins their party. Family always finds a way home, after all.

 

It only occurs to Merle after all is said and done and they are heading to Phandolin that Taako and Magnus had only said their names to him once and he had known them immediately. 

 

That doesn’t stop him from joking like he doesn’t, but it is easy to pretend there isn’t haze around his brain when there is something there that he sticks to more than it does. 

 

It is easy to fall in step with Magnus and Taako, it is easy to tether himself to their words and their goofs in a way he hasn’t been tethered in ten years. Memories make themselves stick, Barry Bluejeans shrinks in his skin like he doesn’t want to but his brain won’t let him go. Klaarg is someone knew, but Merle is  _ feeling  _ and he doesn’t want to stop so he memorizes Klaarg like they really are best friends. 

 

He feels real until a red robe settles over his new bonds like a blanket and muffles everything. 

 

There is his hand on the smooth, wooden finish of an umbrella handle and he  _ knows whose this is he knows whothisbelongstoThisisLup’swhereisshewhyisn’tshewithTaakowhyisn’t- shewithher- _ he can’t remember what he was thinking before his back hits the wall and he feels like his ribs have cracked. He sees Taako reaching for the umbrella and part of him wants to call out for him not to but he is floating above his coughing body and that small part of him couldn’t manage the air to say no even if the rest of him wanted to let it. 

 

There is something right, something natural about the way the umbrella sits in Taako’s hands and when the red robe disintegrates so does the one over his brain. 

 

He doesn’t settle well back into the routine of joking with Taako and Magnus, something is missing and it is so much worse now that he knows it. Part of him can see the space they leave for a fourth body, can see the way Taako’s edges have been blurred out by an artist’s eraser and left to bleed ink all over the pages of his life. Someone stole a piece of his boy, of his life, and now Taako was the one paying for it. 

 

Merle hears Phandolin burn and wonders if Taako knows that his sister made the glove that did that. 

 

Merle sees the smooth black glass and wonders what kind of monster could make the glove that does that. 

 

When the orc woman who keeps reminding Merle of her name even when Merle refuses to try and learn it tells them they have to climb in a cannon ball to get the answers to their questions, Merle just rolls with it. “Isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever done,” he says, and he is joking, of course, but part of him wonders if that isn’t true on some level. 

 

Magnus and Taako climb in after him eventually and it feels right to be soaring through the air with them again, it feels familiar, grounding, and by the time they reach the moon that isn’t actually a moon Merle is back to being Merle. He thinks he called Taako something strange, he knows he called Magnus and the orc woman something strange, but that is normal. That is routine. 

 

Being on the moon? That isn’t. Merle’s sense of reality is thrown clear out the window as soon as he steps out of the silver ball that carried them to where ever he happened to land. He is floating again, but this time he isn’t doing it because he wants to. He is trying to swim back to his body, trying to decipher what is happening around himself, but he can’t. There is static around him instead of just in him, and he knows this white noise that covers his eyes and ears and fills his limbs with lead and feathers in equal measure. 

 

The voidfish ichor helps, but the damage was done as soon as they stepped on base. 

 

All he wants to do now is sleep off the energy the buzzing leaves behind, but instead he is tasked with more thinking. He can’t understand the riddle when the director asks who is the smartest, strongest, or bravest. He knows the correct answer, he knows the answer she wants, and his mouth moves to tell her the former without his permission. 

 

He doesn’t know how he knows that those are two different answers. 

 

The troll battle passes in a blur of missed shots and badly timed jokes, he knows Magnus has a new fetish, he knows Taako has a new focus, he knows he needs a godsdamn nap. 

 

When he falls asleep that night, finally allowed to go to bed after the longest day of his life, he watches himself curl up around a picture of his kids, and he thinks idly that it might be time to visit home. 

 

* * *

 

Merle doesn’t make it home before he has to go looking for another relic. Well, go looking is a little bit of a loose term. He is pretty sure the Director told them where it was and who they were supposed to be impersonating to get it, the information just didn’t stick, kinda like most information he gets. It got lost in the fog of his mind somewhere, along with the name of any individual in the town they left, the man with the fancy bowtie, and anyone on the train with them. 

 

Merle lives a hard life with all this memory loss.

 

The kid on the train though, Angus, he is hard to forget. Merle has successfully raised more kids than he has abandon, but he has abandon two and he has forgotten… Merle doesn’t know why the sharp, assessing eyes of a kid who has seen too much of the world to be as old as he really is sting as deep as they do, but he knows that he hates it. 

 

He can’t let the kid get attached to him, not when he is only going to disappoint him. At least they only have to know each other as long as they are on the train. 

 

* * *

 

When they come back Merle takes to spending time with Davenport in an empty room he has claimed to be his greenhouse. It is more than just a greenhouse these days. It is a temple to Pan, a quiet place for people to collect themselves, a room for Davenport and Merle to play cards or chess. There is something like home about the way the plants he brings to the moon flourish under his care in the enclosed space, about the way he and Davenport fall into a routine of games and puzzles. 

 

Neither of them can pinpoint the rules to any of the card games they play, and no one who sticks around to watch can find rhyme or reason to them either, but their hands remember them just fine, so the men play anyway. 

 

He has been letting his body pilot itself for long enough anyway, a few card games can’t hurt that much, and they don’t. They help, actually, for a while, and Merle falls into something he calls peace. Davenport doesn’t speak in the temple, but he prays often and Merle loves him for it. Not many people use his small altar for prayer, but he figures a church doesn’t have to built in a day, and it doesn’t have to be built by a village either. 

 

Though sometimes he feels like maybe he has helped a village build one. 

 

On Midsummer he realizes he is in love with Davenport, and though it is a big revelation, it is not eathshattering. It is sun warmed and bright blue coming crashing down on the surf like a wave and he is calm through it all because part of him knows, understands, that if his friends weren’t still here it would be heavier than that. It is only the inevitable evening tide, however, and so he faces it down with a peaceful smile and open arms.

 

When he sees Davenport in the crowd of fainted people after the screams of… he knows that something is wrong with the world, that part of him has started a count down, but he cannot tell to what and how long, because there is a layer of opaque film over it and all he is left with is the ticking and the sense of impending doom.

 

When he sees Davenport he feels his heart twist in a way it never had with Hecuba and he knows that he has found home, and he feels so many emotions that he doesn’t know quite what to do with, so he shoves a blanket of static over them and pretends they don’t exist for now. 

 

He lets that evening tide roll in as he plays solitaire until he cannot keep his eyes open, and then he prays and plays some more. 

 

If he cannot think then he cannot feel, and that seems like a good deal to Merle.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t remember much from the next relic mission except the smell of motor oil and two girls, barely old enough to have lived. He knows their smiles, though he only saw one of them, and he feels like he let them die. 

 

He feels like he killed them. 

 

He doesn’t remember much of that relic mission.

 

* * *

 

Merle is cruel to the boy from the train when he turns up again later. He doesn't mean to be, really, not so cruel as he is at least. 

 

He thinks he loves Angus somewhere in the static of his mind and that terrifies him. 

 

Merle clings to the boys he has already raised and is trying to raise again; he clings to the shattered pieces of a family he built from the ashes of a world he had loved dearly and he is cruel to the boy who may whisk it all away. 

 

He thinks that going home might make him less afraid to love him. 

 

When he finds his children’s home, it is a comfort to see that nothing has changed. 

 

Hecuba is leaning in the doorway of her home and there is a peaceful smile on her face that catches the sunlight just right to take Merle’s breath away. He does not remember seeing her smile like that the whole time he lived with her and he knows in his heart that he made the right decision when he walked away. 

 

When he greets her the smile goes away, but she carries herself like she is lighter and Merle is grounded in her happiness. He will remember this visit for the rest of his life. 

 

“So you’ve come back to visit us finally?” Hecuba says with an eyebrow raised and Merle knows he responds because she laughs at what he says, but he cannot hear himself over the eyes of his children as they watch him.

 

“You look happier, Merle,” Hecuba tells him later, as he is waiting for his transport to pick him up. “You look here.”

 

He doesn't tell her that there is a boy back on base who brings out the cruelest bones in his body, instead he just nods as he watches the waves from her side on the beach. “I don't know what I left to look for, but Hecuba?” she isn't smiling at him, and they aren't looking at each other, but he knows she is listening. She has always been good to him like that. “I think I found it anyway.” 

 

* * *

 

They have a christmas party to break in their new suite, and Merle does most of the decorating while Taako comes in behind him and fixes all of it. 

 

They both take singular credit for the decorations. 

 

He forgets to get presents for everyone, and that is a shame, really, because he had such grand plans on what he was going to do for his boys. They both laugh him off when he realizes he can’t remember the plans anymore. He thinks maybe Taako’s had to do with matching outfits and Magnus’s had to do with a jellyfish, but that is okay. 

 

The party feels like gift enough. 

 

It goes well, really, in Merle’ opinion. Though it is somewhat ruined when some dickbag whose name he swears he has heard before tries to ruin it by almost destroying the world. There is something strangely normal about calling the Director Lucretia, though, and he only has to hear it once for it to stick, just like Magnus and Taako and Davenport. 

 

He supposes at least that little bit of good came out of it.

 

When the null suits are red it feels natural to look at his party and see them draped in the color of their enemy. He thinks Lucretia looks more scared than normal when she watches them get ready. 

 

* * *

 

Merle takes his time figuring out what he is doing in the pink tourmaline, and the singing doesn’t help, but he gets there eventually. 

 

He squashes a bug in an elevator museum and then doesn’t squish a bug in a tiny city. It is a little hard to keep up with everything when he isn’t all there, but he manages okay.

 

At least, He mostly manages okay, until Pan calls out for him to catch some rocks and between one moment and the next he stops feeling his arm. He can’t wrap his head around what happened, but he knows it isn’t good and he knows that god lied, so he says as much as the world goes speeding by him and he sits, stagnant, in a pool of mist that he can’t manage to see through. 

 

When he opens his eyes next, he can see everyone around him and he can see his body and he can see  _ his arm? _ He doesn’t see his arm, he sees a tree branch with what looks like the approximation of fingers and he can hear fuzz that sounds like people’s voices but he doesn’t quite care to try and parse through what they are saying because that tree branch  _ is where his arm should be.  _

 

He doesn’t feel phantom pains, not yet. It is too soon after, there is too much adrenaline and too much fog and too little of himself to grab and hold onto so he doesn’t latch on enough to feel any different, aside from having one less finger than he should. 

 

He doesn’t remember the ghosts they fight, but they remember him so he supposes they must have been important. Not that they stick around long, between what feels like one blink and the next they are in the room with Lucas again. 

 

The stone calls him, he knows it does, even through the fog he sits in he can feel it calling him. Magnus eats it before he gets a chance to do more than realize the pull is even there. 

 

In fact, it is only the absence of the pull that makes him realize it was there in the first place, and it triggers another empiness to echo in his head. He does not know when he started to doubt Pan, and, though it falls in line with what happened to his arm ( _ what did happen to his arm, really? All he remembers is Magnus’s axe _ ), he doesn’t really doubt Pan so much as he doubts himself. 

 

He wouldn’t blame Pan for leaving him alone. Not really. 

 

* * *

 

Taako and Magnus make fun of him for taking Lucretia to the spa with him, but there is something pulling him towards her. She holds herself like a queen, like a woman who has felt the weight of the world on her shoulders over and over and over, and he feels like she shouldn’t have to bear that. Something in Merle is telling him to ask her to put it down, if only for a moment. 

 

His heart is telling him to help her carry it. 

 

As they sit in the spa and she drinks her wine by the bottle, he thinks he can see the young woman she should be for just a moment. He sees her set aside her burden for a moment as she sits with him and laughs at his shitty jokes that he only half hears come out of his mouth, and he hopes that she knows that he loves her. 

 

The thought blindsides him as much as it would blindside her, but he rolls with it anyway. She looks like she is his equal in years, and yet he feels like he should be her father, and he loves her like he loves Magnus, like he loves Taako. 

 

When they leave the spa he pats her hip and calls her kid and gives her a gentle smile reserved for a group of people he cannot remember anymore. Lucretia is intimately aware of who that smile belongs to and she doesn’t think she deserves to call herself part of it anymore.

 

“Take care of yourself, Lucy,” He says gently, and he swears she is going to cry as she leans down and gives him a kiss on the forehead. 

 

“You too,” she says before turning away and walking off. 

 

Merle knows that he won’t get to see her that vulnerable again, so he memorizes every detail of that moment and holds tight as he heads to his greenhouse. 

 

He has forgotten and will forget many things, but this is not one of them. He refuses to let this be one of them.

 

* * *

 

Merle remembers dying. He remembers dying and dying and dying and dying in fire and stone and explosions and office buildings and banks and mines and beaches and silver spaceships. 

 

Merle doesn’t promise himself to istus; he already belongs to Pan. He gets her favor anyway, and when the cup can’t show him a regret greater than losing his arm, Merle has to ask himself why. 

 

Maybe it is because he has no regrets, really, or maybe it is because he has never fought against fate’s plans. Merle thinks about his greatest regret and he thinks that maybe if he remembered more of his life he would have more regrets. He knows his boys, and he knows they will not take the chalice. There is no pull, no need coming from it, just the words that it says, and without that pull, its words are just that, words. 

 

He knows his boys are better than its words are. 

 

He doesn’t know if he is, but thankfully he doesn’t have to be to say no to his regrets. 

 

* * *

 

Merle goes on a date with Davenport the same time Taako is on a date with death, and if they happen to stumble upon each other on the same quad at the same time, well, Taako doesn’t notice the other couple in the area so Merle pretends not to notice them either.

 

Merle doesn’t ask about Taako’s date the next morning, and Taako doesn’t talk about it, but he looks happy. 

 

Merle is content as long as Taako is happy.

 

* * *

 

Merle doesn’t know why he threatens Angus, all he knows is that he sees the way Angus watches him interact with his kids and his heart squirms with guilt. 

 

He tells himself that he doesn’t care, that he didn’t mean a word he said to the kid, and that the kid knew it, but the assessing way his eyes glinted while he watched them said otherwise. 

 

Merle doesn’t talk to him on their way back to the moonbase. 

 

* * *

 

Wonderland is a special kind of awful that Merle tries not to lose himself in, but when Pan stops answering his calls, he can’t help himself. 

 

He can feel his well of Magic drying up, he can feel the source cut off and the well running dry and he doesn’t understand how he knows this feeling so intimately, but he understands that this is not a short on Pan’s side. 

 

He cannot think about what else it could be (there is static eating away the parts of his thoughts that try and he cannot distinguish it from the static of a voidfish and the static of a thought his brain simply does not want to think), so he finds comfort in letting his fog consume him. 

 

Merle does not bother praying for any more magic. 

 

* * *

 

When Merle faces down the liches of wonderland, he has one hand on his  _ Xtreme Teen Bible,  _ one hand on his axe, and he is alone on the prime material plane. 

 

One of his allies is on the floor at his feet, catatonic and immobile with his soul clutched carefully in a small jar in his hands, and the other’s body is leering at him from across the catwalk with  _ something else  _ looking at him from out behind his eyes. 

 

Merle takes a deep breath, tightens his hold on his bible, and remembers a promise they made to each other in the common room one dark, stormy night after a few too many drinks and a few too little words.

 

He is and never will be truly alone.

 

* * *

 

Merle doesn’t trust the red robe. He doesn’t trust himself either, but that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t trust the red robe. 

 

He does trust Magnus. 

 

He trusts Magnus, who lost his body in their quest to get this final relic, and is now asking them to go along with the lich. 

 

Merle knows he should take the bell back to Lucretia, should let her figure out what to do. 

 

Merle sighs and hands over his stone. He hasn’t made a choice like this in years, and it feels… it feels good, as his mind and his body work together to make the decision to go against the Borough of Balance. He looks up at the red robe and finds himself wondering what about this lich has him grounded so well. 

 

* * *

 

There is static everywhere he looks in this cave, and it isn’t friendly static like he is used to, it is the same static that eats his thoughts away as he thinks them, that pulls him away from the here and now and sets him adrift whether he wants to be there or not. 

 

When Barry steps out of the pod he thinks maybe there was reason Barry Bluejeans stuck out in his mind the day that they met him. 

 

He feels the static retreat after it eats a thought and he wonders what he could have done to make it hungry. He shrugs it off and focuses instead on his boys, or what is left of them, really. His heart hurts as he looks at Magnus but something in him smothers the hurt with a layer of long-practiced indifference. 

 

He will be back to regular old Magnus soon as the ship leaves this plane with the light, so not much was lost in the end, right?

 

Merle shakes his head as the static rears back from eating another thought and he listens to the boys plan. 

 

His heart doesn’t ache for Magnus like it should, but he supposes that is just shock. He lets his mind drift just enough as the boys plan and somehow, somehow, this feels like home.

 

* * *

 

Merle doesn’t like this plan. Merle doesn’t like this plan he doesn’t like this he doesn’t like this he doesn’tlikethishedoesn’tlikehtishedoesn’t- and just like that Merle isn’t drowning in an illusion of his daughter’s own making anymore, he is floating a little to the left of himself as Taako snaps him out of it and he sees the true hallway again. 

 

Merle knows he shouldn’t be letting this kind of thing happen anymore. He is seeing things from his own eyes but he isn’t feeling them and when Taako throws a hole through the door to Lucretia’s office it takes Merle a minute to remember that this is Lucretia’s office, not Davenport’s. 

 

Taako lets out Barry and Merle isn’t sure what is happening anymore, only that there is a jellyfish on the table that keeps blurring in and out of his vision, his mind, and he doesn’t like that either. 

 

He almost turns to go but Taako catches him and says something that Merle can’t quite understand. His body is hearing it, he knows it is hearing it, can feel the sensory input and thinks maybe he could trace the path the neurons take through his brain to tell him that he is hearing sounds from Taako’s mouth. He can’t process the sound when he is busy tracing it’s path through his brain. 

 

He feels his body responding to what Taako has said even as he marvels at the way he thinks he can trace the signals that move him and before he quite knows it he is lying on a beach again. 

 

Merle watches the sun moves towards the horizon and he listens to the sound of birds and the surf crashing into the sand and he feels calm. He feels whole. He feels… Merle doesn’t quite know what he is feeling because there is lingering static in his bones and in his brain as he lays on the fine, teal sand and stares up at the lavender sky. 

 

The sand is what tips him off more than anything, because no sand in the natural world is this shade of blue, but then again, this is the natural world here, on his ninetieth world to study and learn about. The beaches are blue like the water and the sky is lavender during the day and deep, dark purple during the night just like at home and he knows that this has everything to do with the way light fractures when it hits the particles in the air, in the sand, in the water, but he doesn’t quite remember how he knows this. 

 

“ _ You still out here, Old Man? _ ” A familiar voice calls from somewhere to his right and Merle feels his face stretch into a grin. 

 

“ _ I’m only a few years older than you are, you know, _ ” Merle responds easily from his spot on the beach. There is less static in his bones as he hears a chuckle and warmth blooms in his chest and his grin settles into something softer, something a little more meaningful. 

 

There is a gradient in the sky as the sun dips slowly over the horizon and is swallowed by the ocean and Merle  _ knows  _ this sunset. He has watched this sunset a million times in his life and it has never been quite right, but right here, with his captain-no, his husband-sitting next to him and his family safe on the ship-their home-behind him; this sunset feels as close as he can get.

 

“ _ We will find home one day, right? _ ” Davenport says as his hand finds Merle’s in the sand and they lace their fingers together like they have done a million times and for the first time in Merle’s memory the static he has lived with all his life is gone. 

 

“ _ Yeah, _ ” Merle says, and he can feel this memory slipping, he feels himself being pulled away from the beach and the sunset and the calm and he grips Davenport’s finger just a little harder. “ _ Yeah, I have a good feeling about home. _ ”

 

He looks up at Lucretia, the woman he thought of as daughter, and he knows that he has lived without static for a lot longer than just on that beach, and for a moment, just a moment, he is angry. 

 

Merle realizes that his head is clear in the same moment he realizes that Lucretia is terrified, and his anger dissipates.

 

* * *

 

Davenport sends Merle away with Magnus and that stings. It stings because Merle knows that he loves Davenport but he doesn’t know if Davenport loves him anymore. 

 

* * *

 

Being pulled into Parlay is so, so much different than being the one pulling someone else into parlay. He is still working on remembering everything from his journey, but he doesn’t have to try very hard to remember the man looking at him from across the chess board. 

 

Merle has a private moment of mirth when the thought floats across his mind that John looks about as fractured as he probably does. 

 

The room they are in is surreal in a way Merle isn’t used to physical places being. He is real, he can feel the chair that he sits on, the chess pieces he moves, the table they rest on. When he looks too hard at them, they billow like smoke and press against the edge of his awareness in a way he doesn’t quite know what to do with, so he sticks to looking at John. 

 

* * *

 

Merle tries to save John, he really does. 

 

* * *

 

When Merle feels Pan come flooding back into his limbs and into his heart he nearly cries in relief. There is oil clinging to his skin and pulling at his chest and arms and swallowing his waist and all he think is that there is hope again. 

 

There is darkness and despair and anger pulling at his being and he smiles because he knows, without a doubt in his mind, that it is all lies. 

 

“I cast  _ Zone of Truth! _ ” he calls and he doesn’t know who he is calling to, if it is Pan, Istus, the hunger, or himself, all he knows is that he is leaning into the hope that is flooding his veins and his heart and he is choosing to trust in the power that brought him through over one hundred years of bullshit to land him here, right where he needs to be. 

 

When the holy light around him dissipates, he is the parlor of a god he knows and doesn’t know all at once. He knows, whether by divine intervention or by sheer intuition, that he can’t be here long, but he is here now, and it sets his head reeling. 

 

Pan smiles sheepishly at him from a couch across the table and Merle fumbles for something to say. His brain doesn’t quite catch up in time for his mouth to manage a sound before Pan speaks. “Hi, uh, Merle,” he greets, and he waves a little. 

 

For all Merle ever imagined Pan to be, a nervous nerd who doesn’t know how to talk to his people had never crossed his mind. 

 

“Hey, boss, What’s, uhh,” Merle’s mouth doesn’t seem to be quite working, “where you been? What’s, uhh, I… I mean, I’m not pissed, or, um, anything… but where- what’s been goin’ on? Why haven’t you been helpin’ me out? Why haven’t you been there for me?”

 

Pan rubs the back of his neck and doesn’t meet Merle’s eyes as Merle struggles to get his brain to comprehend the situation. “Merle, I… I tell the trees when to shed their leaves, and I make every piece of fruit taste the way that it tastes, and I taught every blade of grass in the ground where to grow. Did you really think I had forgotten about  _ you _ ?” 

 

Merle can’t wrap his head around the meaning in that statement, so he chokes out the honest to Pan truth, “Yeah!” Merle almost laughs at how incredibly  _ easy  _ it would have been for Pan to forget him. 

 

Pan shakes his head and gives a small, sad chuckle as he says, “I was trapped in the Celestial Plane, Merle, along with every other god and I am so sorry. I’m so sorry that… I wasn’t strong enough to find a way out on my own.”

 

Merle isn’t quite sure why his brain is lagging so far behind his mouth, but it is and while part of him relishes in the freedom to say what he wants, the other part cringes at how he is responding to his God. “Aw, well, yeah, make me feel guilty now.”

 

Thankfully, Pan actually laughs at that one, “That’s not my intention either, I just… I want you to understand where I was because I don’t want you to think I had forsaken you, Merle.”

 

Merle shrugs at that and says, “Hey, I can live with that! Like I said, I’m still alive, my buddies are, I think, still alive. So, I got my magic back? I mean is this a temporary thing? I mean am— m— m… is this for real?” 

 

Merle can’t banish the lingering fear that this isn’t going to last. 

 

Pan smiles gently and warmly at Merle as he says, “Merle, I’m back, and with you for good. And I- Merle I heard your story, and I need you to know something,” the room around them starts to fade even as Pan and his voice stays as strong as ever. He stands up and moves around the table between them and pulls Merle to his feel, holding his hands and looking him in the eyes as he speaks. “You’re not from this world, and so, technically speaking, that means I’m not your Pan,” His eyes sparkle with warmth even as the rest of him fades with the scene, “but you will always be  _ my Merle. _ ”

 

Merle wakes up in the middle of a dirt road with the ghost of Pan’s lips on his forehead and his words echoing in his ears. 

 

It helps when he remembers John’s face as he got pulled back into the hunger. 

 

* * *

 

When Merle looks back later, he can pinpoint the exact moment he realized that he could get back on the moon and get back to his people, but in the moment he hardly knows what is happening between a giant worm destroying one of the judges and him zooming through the air on his broom up to where he hopes his family will be waiting for him.

 

They are waiting for him. 

 

He doesn’t even bother to land when he sees the way Davenport looks at him. Instead, Merle lets the broom take him close enough to the ground for him to jump as he flies towards his husband (and boy does that thought make his heart  _ soar _ , Davenport, who he loved in two different lifetimes and he would choose to love in even more, is his husband) and once he is close enough he jumps to the ground and sweeps his husband into his arms. 

 

He hears his broom hit the ground somewhere past them but all he cares about it the man in his arms and the way he is wrapping his shaking arms around Merle. 

 

“I-I-I’m so glad you’re s-s-safe,” Davenport says and Merle feels himself sigh at the stutter that wasn’t there before all of this happened. 

 

Merle hugs Davenport a little tighter and rests his lips against the top of his wild mass of red hair as he murmurs, “O’course I am. Couldn’t leave you to deal with the kids on your own, now could I?”

 

Davenport chuckles and pulls back to kiss him properly before turning to address everyone else.

 

Merle doesn’t let go of his waist until he has to.

 

* * *

 

When Merle tells Lucretia that he forgives her, he is telling the truth. He loves her, he forgives her, he knows exactly what her thought process was when she erased all those parts of who his family was and he knows that she never expected to have a family again, she just wanted them to be happy. 

 

Merle hugs her, and he knows that there will be healing to come, he knows that there will be a long road to travel before the rest of them will be able to fully forgive Lucretia (or even begin to forgive her in some cases), but Merle would be there every step of the way. 

 

Starting with this step. 

 

Merle boards the starblaster and he gives his husband (because Davenport is his husband first and his captain second) one last kiss before they leave his home behind to go save it. 

 

As they fly ever closer to the hunger and Davenport’s clever hands steer them safely towards the being they have been running from for over one hundred years now, Merle closes his eyes and clasps his flesh hand around the locket with his kids’ faces in them. 

 

“If I never see them again,” he says in the general direction of whatever deity decides to be listening at that moment, “just make sure they know that I love them, and that I am sorry I never really knew them.” When he opens his eyes his heart is in his throat and he ready to save the world or else die trying. 

 

* * *

 

Merle wakes up on a beach. There are no birds this time, but the sounds to the waves crashing on the shore is plenty peaceful enough for him. The sand is soft on his legs and the palm of his hand where he is already sitting up and leaning back to rest his weight on his hands so he can see the sunset. 

 

This isn’t a memory, he can feel that in the way he is here, physically, not just mentally. He can taste the salt water on the wind that blows through his beard and cools his face (that has a suspicious lack ot marks from his final stand against the hunger, he hasn’t forgotten that he should be dead several times over). He can dig his wooden fingers into the sand and bid them dig until they find nutrients, and they find them. He can feel the air flowing in and out of his lungs as he breathes, he can feel the sunlight hitting his skin and soaking in all the way down to his bones. 

 

No, this is not a memory. 

 

When John joins him on the sand, his dark complexion clear of all marks of the hunger except faded scars, Merle isn’t surprised. 

 

“Merle… Will you.. Can we just… sit here… for a moment?” John says, and he sounds so tired. 

 

“Sure buddy,” Merle says. 

 

“We don’t… We don’t have to talk,” John says quietly as he wraps his spindly arms around his knees and digs his toes in the sand. “We can just… Just sit here… Let’s just watch this together...”

 

Merle doesn’t comment, just watches the sun as it moves slowly towards the horizon. He lets his eyes wander to John twice and both times he is focused entirely on the sunset, watching intently as oranges and pinks and reds streak the blue sky in what must be his first sunset in a millennia. 

 

Merle almost speaks as the tide pulls away and the sun dips further below the horizon, but in the end he doesn’t think he needs to. 

 

This is John’s way of saying goodbye. He is saying goodbye and thank you all at once. With his last breath, he is showing Merle what he missed most, and he is thanking him for freeing him. 

 

When the last of the sun is gone, so is John.

 

Merle will not cry for him.

 

* * *

 

Merle sends Davenport back planetside through the bond engine with a kiss and a whispered “See you soon, spaceman,” that he doesn’t actually believe. He turns back to face Lucretia with his boys at his side and when she tells them to run he shakes his head. 

 

She will not face this darkness alone, not anymore. 

 

The world freezes and Merle supposes that the extra second to decide is a blessing to Taako, and for that he is thankful, but for himself, he doesn’t have a decision to make. He will stand with his daughter to his last breath. 

 

He won’t abandon his family ever again. 

  
  


They wake up first in the Rockport limited, but that isn’t quite so important to Merle as when he wakes up the second time back home. 

 

There is adrenaline running through his veins and powering his movement as he looks around himself and looks for the rest of his family. He has woken alone in too many strange places; he is tired of it. 

 

To his right is Taako and Magnus, already standing up and realizing that the fight is finally over, already gearing up to celebrate the end of their time running. To his left is Lucretia, sitting up and looking three hundred years older than she should be, acting about three hundred years younger than she is. 

 

Merle sighs, stands, and waddles his way over to her side. “Looks like you did it,” he says, holding out a hand to her. 

 

She looks up at him and he can see the child that grew up through a hundred apocalypses, who made all the wrong choices, who just wanted her family to be happy, and doesn’t know what to do now that they can be. “I…. I did… didn’t I?”

 

Merle smiles gently and pats her on the shoulder. “You sure did, Kiddo,” he says before leaning in and giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “You sure did.” 

 

When he pulls away Lucretia is crying, but he isn’t too worried about her just yet, she has a family to keep her afloat, whether she knows it or not, and he has other people he has to find. He pats her shoulder one more time before meeting eyes with Carey and Killian over Lucretia’s shoulder and nodding, then turning away to find Davenport. 

 

He can still hear Lucretia’s watery laughter drifting towards him as he takes his husband into his arms and he smiles wide as he feels the adrenaline draining out of his limbs and being replaced with the heavy weariness of running his magic and physical body dry. 

 

“I think it’s time for a nap,” Davenport says, and he sounds as tired as Merle feels.

 

“Not for me,” Merle sighs into Davenport’s wild ginger hair. “Not quite yet. I have a couple kids and an Ex-wife to check up on first.”

 

Davenport groans and Merle chuckles before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You go rest, Cap, I can find them and then join you when I’m ready.”

 

Davenport shakes his head and Merle is secretly pleased that even after everything Davenport is just as stubbornly caring as always. “I’m not leaving your side, Old man,” he says, and Merle laughs at the old nickname. 

 

“Then to Avi we go,” Merle says. 

 

If it takes them ten more minutes to move from their hug, then, well, no one mentions it later.

  
  


* * *

 

One year later, Merle wakes up on the beach. 

 

He is laying on his back on the burning sand and he can hear seagulls screaming from a rock a little way away and he is staring up at the clear blue and sky and there  _ isn’t  _ something off about that. This is his home, the sky is baby blue, the water is turquoise, the sand is yellow, and he is laying on it next to his husband and taking a nap for a short moment of peace before he has to get ready for the rest of the day’s festivities. 

 

Merle smiles gently up at the sky as he feels Davenport’s hand slip into his and he brings their hands up to his mouth to plant a gentle kiss against the back of his husband’s hand. 

 

It is peaceful, right now, with nothing happening on this small stretch of sand between the ocean and the land where a temple to Pan rests, where he will have to be in only a matter of hours. He volunteered to do that, he remembers his own wedding and he remembers having a stranger officiate because he couldn’t officiate his own wedding.

 

Well, the wedding that had lasted at least. 

 

Merle lets davenport pull their hands back towards himself and he meets his clear green eyes with laughter in his own and Davenport huffs. “You know I can’t ever be angry at you when you look at me like that,” he says. 

 

“Like what?” Merle asks, and he doesn’t even bother to layer fake innocence in his voice. 

 

Davenport pushes him and Merle laughs. “Get up you old fool, we need to start getting ready or Lup and Taako will have our heads on silver platters for the guests to eat.”

 

Merle rolls his eyes and pulls Davenport in for a sandy kiss before letting him go and sitting up. 

 

“Gross,” Davenport says after he spits some sand out of his mouth and pats his moustache. Merle is sure he looks almost as ridiculous as Davenport with sand all in their hair and beards as well as all along their clothing from laying in it all morning. 

 

Merle can’t help the way his smile goes a little dopey as he remembers where he was this time last year. “You know,” Merle starts, but he doesn’t finish because Mookie pounces on him from behind. 

 

“Come on Gross old men!” Mookie is yelling, and Merle laughs as he reaches up and heaves Mookie over his head so he is in his lap. 

 

It is Davenport’s turn to sport the loving smile. 

 

“Did I hear you ask to get tickled?!” Merle shouts over Mookie’s actual message he came to deliver, causing him to shriek as Merle digs his fingers into his side and makes him laugh. 

 

Mavis comes over the side of the hill just as Mookie escapes Merle’s clutches and throws himself at Davenport for protection. Mavis raises her eyebrow at the two men as Davenport wraps his arms around the young boy and says, “Merle how could you do that to our son?” Mookie nods and settles further into Davenport’s hold. “You know that  _ this is how you actually tickle him! _ ”

 

Mavis and Merle howl with laughter and Mookie screams in betrayal and Davenport tickles him, holding him to him with a deceptive amount of strength. After a moment, Mavis calms down enough to say, “Aunt Lup and Uncle Taako said it’s time to go get ready or you two will be in trouble.”

 

Merle raises an eyebrow as Davenport and Mookie calm down and says, “You sure that’s all they said?” 

 

“Well-” Mavis starts, her face turning red.

 

“They said, ‘If those two dirty old men are still on the beach in ten minutes we’ll come skewer them and serve them with the barbeque’ word for word,” Mookie says delightedly and Davenport shoots Merle an ‘I told you so’ look. 

 

Merle grins and reaches to muss Mookie’s hair. “I’m sure they did, Mookie. Go find your mom and make sure she isn’t causing too much trouble, I’ll kick old man Dav into gear.”

 

Mookie jumps up from his spot between Davenport and Merle and grabs Mavis’s hand to drag her away. “See you later dads!” they both call back to Merle and Davenport, and the two men wave until they are around the side of the temple. 

 

Merle sighs happily again and then stands the same time Davenport does. “Guess we better go get cleaned up, huh?”

 

Davenport grins and grabs his hand. “Yeah, we probably should.”

 

Davenport and Merle walk hand in hand to the temple where their family is waiting to help them get ready for Carey and Killian’s wedding day. 

 

Things are different now than they were when Merle woke up on that beach ten years ago now, and as Merle turns to look back at the little strip of sand he had been laying on one last time before going inside, He can’t help but pause as a familiar fog starts to gather at the sides of his mind and he remembers just how far he came. 

 

A voice calls for him from inside the church and the fog retreats, leaving a happy clarity in its place that he has grown used to the past year. 

 

He is home, and he is here to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> almost two months later and over 10k words and a lot of tears later, we haev the finished product of a merle projection and talking about Merle's backstory with the TFW discord. 
> 
> don't forget to comment and kudo if u enjoyed and hmu at lupcult.tumblr.com if u love merle so much that u read this whole thing!!!
> 
> Thank u guys so much!!


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